Small World
by Twinings
Summary: Among other things, it's a world of fear. So they say. -CAT-
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I don't own the Scarecrow. I don't own any scarecrows at all._

_Karen Keeny and her daughter are from Scarecrow: Year One. Only the daughter's name and their life after leaving Georgia are original to me._

_This is a CATfic, arc 5, following...well, several things, but let's call it "Caught in the Draft," and before, let's say, "The Significance of the Number Three." (Feel free to view the timeline at catverse dot com.) While the bookends take place in February of CATverse year 2015, the main story is May of 2005._

_I'm sorry that I haven't written anything lately, and also that I haven't been answering my reviews. I'm currently in a position to be somewhat more productive than I have been, and I also have reliable internet for the first time in a year. As always, I hope to satisfy, and thanks for reading._

* * *

Small World

* * *

Dr. Elisabeth Carey was not the type of woman to bang her head on a flat surface in times of stress.

But she was beginning to rethink her decision to take this job at Sunshine Sanitarium. A private practice, throwing pills at the ennui of the very wealthy, was sounding more and more relaxing.

She had lost a patient.

That happened from time to time, and as a doctor, Elisabeth had learned to accept it. In the past month, there had been two suicides, a heart attack, and one very convoluted escape-none of which had been as upsetting as the simple disappearance of patient B3168 - Marilyn Keeny.

Marilyn was a sweet girl, an orphan who had been living at the State Hospital in Metropolis for more than a decade before being transferred back to her hometown with the opening of Sunshine. The girl was no danger to anyone, but she was prone to violent panic attacks under certain stimuli. She would never be able to function in the outside world, away from the caring, controlled environment she was used to, and she had never displayed any willingness to make the attempt.

The worst part about all this was that there was a witness to the disappearance: patient C6742 - Cadence Armitage.

She wasn't coping well with the disturbance. Cadence had made tremendous progress since the day, nearly a month ago, when the police had dragged her back in, kicking and screaming. She was able to speak in complete sentences again, and was learning to tolerate the presence of other people for short periods of time.

All that work had been undone. Whatever Cadence had witnessed had left her catatonic.

And she was sporting a nasty (Elisabeth almost had to think _vindictive_) set of bruises.

While Dr. Carey took a professional interest in Cadence's welfare, both physical and mental, she couldn't help being _more_ worried about what was happening to poor little Marilyn…

* * *

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, the Scarecrow was being robbed at gunpoint.

Funny how that worked out. A man took a stroll down 15th Avenue in the middle of the afternoon, broad daylight, people all around, and he _still_ managed to get himself yanked into an alleyway and thrown against a wall.

Fortunately, this mugger wasn't very bright. When Crane tossed a capsule at him, he merely caught it and stared as if it might turn out to be some new, perplexing form of wallet.

When the capsule burst open, the mugger fell to the ground, choking and whining about spiders.

Spiders. How…prosaic.

As a precaution, he took the gun, leaving his would-be attacker writhing in a pool of his own cowardice, to be picked over by the inevitable vultures.

Fortunately, this alley wasn't far from the Laundromat where the girls—his minions—had asked to meet him. He didn't even bother to remove the mask.

So, he supposed later, he _could_ have feigned startlement and shot them all when they jumped out from behind an industrial sized washing machine and yelled, "Surprise!"

In point of fact, he was more startled than they must have expected by the presence of a fourth girl, a mere child, who took one look at his mask and started screaming her head off, clinging to the Captain and doing her best to hide.

"I take it you've already met," Techie said dryly. "So much for the surprise."

He stared at the girl, trying to place her. She was about eighteen, blonde, fairly pretty…no makeup…dressed as plainly as a modern day Quaker miss…and he didn't recognize her. The way she was carrying on, it was almost a given that he had experimented on her sometime in the past, but she just wasn't familiar. And while he might occasionally forget a name or a face, a set of lungs like that he would have remembered.

"All right, I give up," he admitted. "Who is she?"

The Captain led the hysterical girl away, trying to soothe her. The others grinned at him, all-out laughter threatening in their eyes.

"Well, Squishy, I can see why you never told us you had a sister," Al said.

He winced.

Oh, _no_.

The brat? _This_ was THE BRAT?

Was he _never_ going to be able to leave his relations in the past, where every one of them belonged?

"Where did you find her?" he demanded.

"At Sunshine. We were checking up on the bitch—you know the one—and this girl turned out to be her roommate. We thought…did we do something wrong?"

"Sunshine Sanitarium?" He forced back something that could have been a smile. "I must have made quite an impression on her the last time we met."

They looked at the girl, who was still screaming and showed no sign of stopping.

"I think we have some time before any meaningful reuniony things can occur," said Techie. "So, do we get to hear the story, or what?"


	2. Chapter 2

_A quick refresher for anyone who missed it: in _Scarecrow: Year One_, Jonathan Crane was the son of a teenaged junkie (Karen Keeny) who lived with her abusive mother and grandmother. He was raised by his crazy great-granny, never knowing either of his parents. As an adult, he seeks out his mother, who is married to a man who regularly beats her, with whom she has a daughter. I find it interesting that despite the fact that his reason for being there is to kill his mother, the only person who dies is the husband, who Crane takes down without a second's hesitation when he's about to hit Karen._

_Also, Karen flirts with Batman. She's such a MILF._

* * *

The last Sunday in May was Mother's Day. The holiday could mean different things to different people, but to eight-year-old Marilyn Keeny, it meant a day of fun with Mommy.

Karen and her daughter didn't get to spend much time together. Ever since Marilyn's father had died and they'd moved to Gotham, her mom had been busy, busy, busy. Her job at WayneTech was a good one—Mr. Wayne was more generous with his employees' salaries and bonuses than most CEOs, and he showed more interest in the well-being of a mere secretary than the bare minimum necessary to get the job done. According to rumor, that was because he was a skirt-chasing philanderer, but he had never done anything more with Karen than the occasional casual flirtation. She thought he was a nice enough guy. Marilyn thought the sun must rise and set on his whim.

It wasn't bad, living there in Gotham. A little cold. Mari could vaguely remember her last sweltering summer in Georgia, when the air conditioner had been broken and neither one of her parents had been happy. Daddy had been angry, always angry, right up until the moment he died, when he had been too surprised to be much of anything else. Mommy had seemed broken, and it had been a long time before her eyes had started to sparkle the way they did now. Mari had cried all the time.

Things were better in Gotham. She didn't even mind the cold very much. Who was she to complain about having to wear a coat, when she had a whole day at Gotham Adventure Fun Park to look forward to—thanks to Mommy's Wayne Enterprises employee discount.

She had never been so excited. She had never seen her mommy look happier. This was going to be the best Mother's Day ever.

* * *

"Sorry, little girl. You're not tall enough to ride the Watchtower. Why don't you try Titans Tower instead?"

"I hate kid rides," Mari pouted. She was trying her best to be good, but that just wasn't fair. She wanted a ride that would shoot her a million miles into the air and throw her back down to earth. It sucked to be short.

"There must be something else you'd like to do," Karen suggested.

"Well..." She pointed at the nearby House of Horrors. "That?" Her mother went strangely pale.

"No."

"But, Mommy!"

"I said no," Karen repeated.

"Why not?" Having forgotten her promise to be on her best behavior, she was on the verge of throwing a screaming fit.

"Because I said so! I don't want to take you on a scary ride, Marilyn."

"_I'm_ not scared."

"Do I need to take you home?"

Karen wasn't much of a disciplinarian; in fact, Marilyn pretty much had her mother wrapped around her little finger. But when that question came up, she knew better than to keep arguing.

Still, she muttered defiantly, "But I _want_ to ride it."

"Could we _please_ compromise, just this once?" Karen asked, pointing out the sign for a ride that Marilyn hadn't noticed. She read it laboriously.

"A-mer-i-can Hol-i-days. The…happiest…year…you've…ever…seen." She looked up at her mother skeptically. It sounded dumb.

"Just get in line, will you?"

By the time the ride actually started, Marilyn had forgotten all about throwing her fit, although she still wasn't perfectly satisfied with the excuse for staying off the haunted house ride.

The two of them sat together in the front seat of a tiny little car that rolled down its little track into a pitch black room, and stopped. Marilyn shivered with anticipation.

"Ten!" She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. "Nine!" She grasped her mother's hand. "Eight!" She couldn't stop fidgeting. "Seven!" Okay, now she was getting kind of bored. "Six!" All right, already. "Five!"

"Four, three, two, one," Marilyn announced loudly. Karen shushed her. Behind them, someone laughed. Mari ignored it, just willing the car to move forward.

And then she was blinded by light. And the music started.

"Have a happy holiday, happy happy holiday, have a happy holiday, it's Newwww Yearrrr's Daaaay!" The room was shimmery white with fake snow, populated with ringing bells and jerkily dancing plastic people who looked an awful lot like Betsy Wetsy. Most of them looked like they were jazzercising, but she saw a few putting coins in piggy banks or putting away half-eaten food. One pair in a tuxedo and a pretty dress was dancing under a huge disco ball thing, and a few more were setting off fireworks. Boring fireworks that were clearly just lights on the wall.

"What are they doing, Mommy?"

"Making their New Year's resolutions."

"Like when you stopped smoking?"

"Uh…yeah, just like that."

Mari giggled. Her mom was so silly, thinking nobody could see the pack of cigarettes in her pocket.

The car moved into the next room, garish red and pink, two of Mari's favorite colors, but not very pretty put together.

"Happy Happy Valentine's Day! Tell your sweetheart it's okay!"

Mari wrinkled her nose. Gross. The plastic people were _kissing_ each other.

"Everybody's feeling fine! Happy Valentine!"

And _she_ could have written a better song than that.

"Mom, this is boring. I _want_ to go to the House of Horrors."

* * *

_Meanwhile, in the House of Horrors:_

OH GOD MY EYES! MY EYES! SOMEBODY HELP ME! **PLEASE!** OH DEAR SWEET JESUS, **NO, NO, NO!**


	3. Chapter 3

_A quick author's note: What kind of idiot _forgets_ that she has a story going? I'm sorry. Somehow it just didn't occur to me that I had more to post. Screw the suspense, the rest of this is going up in chunks__._

* * *

They passed through March: green, Irish, and boring. April: surprisingly boring for so many whoopee cushions. May: boring moms. June: a boring wedding, which wasn't even a real holiday. July: boring in red, white, and blue. August: short.

September was based on Labor Day. By this time, Mari was ready to bang her head against the wall.

Halloween perked her up, with a couple of witches, some skeletons, a ghost or two, and a family of vampires sitting down to a meal of blood in wine glasses. Without that, she might not have made it through Thanksgiving.

Christmas had never taken so long to come.

When it finally did ("Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you all had lots of fun! Now it's over and we say Happy Holidays!") she popped up the safety bar and vaulted out of the car before it even stopped moving.

"Mari!"

"'Kay, Mom, I'm going to the haunted house now!" She dashed for the exit, freedom so close she could taste it.

But she had to pull up short to avoid running into the security guard who was blocking her way. He was holding a nightstick-and shaking so bad he almost dropped it.

"Whoa there, little lady. I need you to leave this place in an orderly fashion, okay?" He gave her a terrified, toothy grin as her mom caught up and pulled Mari close to her side.

"What's going on?"

"I need you to stay calm, ma'am, and try to keep the little girl quiet. We're evacuating the park." Karen went very still.

"Why?"

"It's…the Scarecrow." His attempt to stay cool and collected did nothing for Karen, who dropped as if her legs had been cut. Mari, pulled off balance, could only stare at her mother, whose face had gone completely white.

"Mommy?"

"Mari…I want you to do everything this nice man tells you. We're going to stay in the middle of the crowd, and you can't do _anything_ to draw attention to yourself. If you and I get separated, the most important thing is for you to run. Don't wait for me. Get out of this park, go to the police, and tell them you've been a target in the past."

"I've been a target in the past," Mari repeated uncertainly. "Mommy?"

"I love you, Marilyn. I love you very much."

The security guard was telling the other park guests that the safest way out was to follow the standard evacuation routes and above all act casual. They didn't seem to be listening to him. Mari didn't much like the idea of getting in the middle of that mob.

"Mommy, I'm scared."

"I know, Mari. So am I."


	4. Chapter 4

Having successfully undermined the mental stability of the entire population of the House of Horrors, the Scarecrow sauntered off toward the next attraction.

He was really quite proud of his handiwork. Apparently, the word was already spreading. A highly disorganized mob was already pouring from the exit of the Happy Holidays monstrosity. He tapped his scythe (a new and delightful acquisition) on the cobblestones to get their attention, and tossed two capsules of fear toxin at the ones in front. The mob surged cartoonishly, some shoving forward and others pushing back, paying no attention to their positions in the crowd, those who had been affected by the drug indistinguishable from those who had not. He waited to see who would be trampled first.

That honor almost went to a little blond girl in a Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt, but she managed to pull herself up to stand precariously on the door handle, nearly falling each time someone slammed into the door-which was a near-constant occurrence.

There was a woman shoving her way toward the child through the crowd, throwing punches left and right. She had to have been the girl's mother. No one else would have bothered coming to the rescue. Not with this level of desperation.

There were very few things more satisfying than a mother afraid for her child.

She was a small woman, not a natural match for those she was knocking down so handily. But she made it through just fine, pulled the child down, and held her close.

Without the surging adrenaline, she didn't fare as well against the crowd. She was shoved back and forth, and finally spun around so that she was looking right at him.

He would have laughed if he hadn't been momentarily struck dumb.

_Mother?_

She screamed, the perfect catalyst for turning the confused mob into a stampeding mass. She managed to avoid being crushed by ducking back inside, just as the doorway was completely clogged with a mass of humanity. She wouldn't be getting out of there any time soon.

Whistling jauntily, the Scarecrow walked around to the staff entrance.


	5. Chapter 5

"Be very quiet and follow the tracks," Karen whispered, pulling her daughter through the doorway to the attraction. Nobody else seemed to have thought of going that way. At least they wouldn't be trampled.

"What are we doing, Mommy? What's going on?"

Karen just pulled her daughter through the Christmas section. She couldn't explain it. She just couldn't.

"Mom!"

"Be _quiet_, Mari. We're going back to the beginning, so we can get out through the entrance." Leaning back with all her weight, she pried open the door to Thanksgiving.

"But what's the matter with everybody? Who is that man?"

"He's…a bad criminal. Come on." She pulled her little girl past the dancing turkey. The door to Halloween hadn't quite shut all the way. If they were careful, they might both be able to squeeze through the gap.

Then the lights went out. Mari screamed and clung to her mother's leg.

"Hush, baby. Hush. It's okay." It absolutely was not. This was _his_ doing. He knew where they were, and he was coming after them, and they were going to die.

But at least the music had stopped.

"Mommy!"

"It's okay, Mari. The power went out. Just like when we have a bad storm. We can still find our way." She edged forward, keeping one foot on the track, dreading what she might run into in the dark.

Still, it didn't much come as a relief when the emergency lights came on moments later. The animatronics jerked back to life, accompanied by that awful song-now sounding warped, like a tape played back at the wrong speed.

Karen boosted her daughter through the gap in the door, and tried to wriggle through after her. It was a tighter squeeze than she had expected.

"Go, Mari. I'm right behind you. Get through the doors if you can. If not, hide, and don't come out no matter what you do." She twisted, scraping her hips across the edges of the door. Footsteps echoed weirdly somewhere behind her. "And don't open your eyes. Whatever you might hear, _don't look_." She could hear him whistling the holiday song, slow and eerie and just a little off key. He was close. "Run, Mari!"

Terrified, Marilyn ran for the door to Labor Day. It was fully closed. She started to come back toward Karen, then changed direction and ducked under the sheet covering an animatronic ghost.

_Good girl._

"I could have crushed you with the door," the darkness whispered. Something touched her ankle. Karen shrieked and kicked out, gaining the force she needed to break through. She stumbled away from the door, blood running down the back of her leg from where she had scraped it.

"Mari, _stay_," she whispered. He was _not_ going to find her baby. She wrenched an arm off a dancing skeleton and backed away from the door, holding it over her shoulder like a baseball bat.

There was no sound. No movement. She crept up to the door, ready to bash any body part that might come through.

Just as she was starting to feel an ache in her chest from holding her breath, something tapped her on the shoulder.

Karen screamed again and whirled around, flailing out with the skeleton arm. The Scarecrow's scythe knocked it out of her hands. Easily.

"What?" she said rather stupidly. He jerked his thumb at the emergency exit sign she hadn't noticed behind him.

"There's one in every room. Fire codes, Mother. I can see I didn't get my brains from you."

"You're here…to kill me. Aren't you?"

"Very good, Mother. I applaud you. Really. But to tell you the truth, I had no idea you would be here. This little bonus really makes my day."

She sucked in a quick breath and blurted, "I don't blame you."

He pulled back from her.

"_What_?"

_What?_ her mind echoed, even as her mouth carried on.

"You're not the only Keeny who ever wanted to kill his mom."

"I'm no Keeny," he grated.

"No…you wouldn't be, would you?" She sagged against the wall, eyeing his scythe with more dejection than fear. "I'm sorry…Jonathan. I'm so very sorry." Something changed in his expression, what little she could see of it behind the mask.

"You're _sorry_?" His tone was incredulous, his voice creeping up from the barely human whisper into something almost normal.

"I'm sorry I didn't…fight…for you. I wasn't ready to be a mother then, but…not a day goes by that I don't regret that I didn't try."

He lowered the scythe, eyes narrowed.

"You're stalling. Why?"

"I'm-I'm not." She forced herself to keep her eyes locked with his. _Don't make a sound, Mari. Let him forget you're here._

"Do you think _Batman_ is going to save you?"

"Well, that _is_ what happened last time," she said wryly. His eyes closed briefly. She decided to press her luck. "That gas-your weapon-when he turned it on you, what did you see?" _She _had seen nothing but him, a threatening stranger pointing a gun at her baby. "Was it _her_?"

His grip tightened on the scythe, eyes hardening.

"What would _you_ know about _her_?"

Karen stumbled back from him, into the wall.

"She raised me, too!"

A strange expression flashed across his eyes, gone by the time the flat of his scythe slammed her head against the wall.

And she could see them both, the larger than life figures from her childhood. Mother, all sound and fury, a tightly focused storm of anger. And Granny, diamond hard and cold as winter.

Mother, screaming at Daddy the last time anybody ever saw him, before he wised up and left them for good. Granny, saying nothing. Mother, following her out to watch her cut a switch. Granny, saying nothing. Mother, slapping her across the face with a coat hanger, then telling her she'd better figure out how to use it. Granny, saying nothing. Mother, saying, "It won't live. Bury it in the compost heap." Granny, holding a skinny, screaming, naked newborn boy, saying nothing.

Mother, taking her away to Atlanta, only to abandon her there when she became an inconvenience. Granny, saying nothing. Granny never would have said a word. She had gone and dug through the compost heap the night before they left, as she had once dug when she had heard the rumor that Mother had killed Daddy and disposed of _his_ body there-was that why she had suggested it as a final resting place for Karen's baby? Did she know what the people in town said about her? Was it _true_? Granny had found her both times, taken her arm in an iron grip and led her back into the house, and said nothing.

She never would have said a thing. If Karen hadn't called once, years later, hoping to ask for money, she never would have known her son was still alive.

Her son, but not _her son_. She had cried for her baby, the baby who had been a part of her even if she'd never really wanted him. She'd mourned him, and then put his memory away. She had gone on with her life, and when she had heard his shy little voice answering the phone, it hadn't been the knife in the gut it once would have been. When her granny took the phone away from him and told her never to call again, it had been easier to obey than she would have thought. The habits of fear and obedience were deeply ingrained.

And she had let him go.

And he had grown into this. A monster.

Her fault.

She sobbed, turned her face away, a fraction of her attention already gone, scanning for Mari.

There. A flash of red, too bright against the Halloween black. Still hiding with the ghost, but not hidden nearly well enough.

Karen forced herself to look up at the Scarecrow, but couldn't keep from flinching from his eyes. They were Granny's eyes. Cold, hard, unforgiving as ice.

"You knew what she was like." His voice, too, was frozen. She started to shake.

"Mother…was worse."

His eyes narrowed to mere slits.

"I find that difficult to believe."

The scythe swung back, and all she could think was, _Not in front of my baby_.

The words came from nowhere: "They didn't even let me hold my son." And she was moving forward, chin on his shoulder, arms around his waist. She thought she felt him trembling, but she dismissed the idea. The scythe clattered to the floor. She waved a hand at Marilyn, desperately signaling her toward the exit, forgetting that she'd told her to close her eyes.

She found herself hardly touching him, and tightened her grip. He was so much more slightly built than she had expected, lost in a costume that hung on him like a tent. Like a kid playing dress-up. His arms moved, first away from her, as if she were poison, and then, slowly, back in. His hands closed on her shoulders with bruising force.

He shoved her away.

"You_ lie_!" The ice had cracked. The wind was knocked out of her when she hit the wall. All she could do was shake her head, no, no, no.

His fist smashed across her face, just under her left eye, badly aimed, but effective enough. He threw punches like her ex-husband.

The husband her son had killed when he'd threatened _her_.

"Jonathan-"

There were tears, blinked back and welling up again. She reached for him again, and meant it. He reached for her, too, the son she had never touched and never known, falling toward her, no different from Mari when she scraped her knee.

His hands clamped down on her throat. Her head hit the wall again, and everything blurred.

_No_…

She pulled ineffectually at his wrists. He leaned into her, squeezing harder.

_No…Mari…_She tried to speak. Nothing came out. Her body spasmed, lungs straining to expand. She was really going to die.

_Not now. Not like this._

She dragged at his arms with all her rapidly failing strength. His elbows bent, but she couldn't begin to break his grip.

_Marilyn…_

Tears were running down her face. Pain and terror and a lifetime of regret.

_My baby._

The world was starting to go. She made herself focus on him. Tried again to speak. It was far too late.

_I'm sorry._

She heard him say it again: "Liar."

Then there was just the roaring in her ears.

And nothing.


	6. Chapter 6

Crane let the body fall to the floor. She was still warm, heart possibly still beating, but she would never breathe again. The spray of blood when he slammed his scythe into her throat hit him full in the face. He put a foot on her chest to pull the weapon out, and slammed it down again. And again. And again and again, breathing hard, sweat stinging his eyes, until her neck and chest were barely recognizable as a single mass, held together by nothing more than threads of flesh.

His last vicious swing severed her spine and sent her head rolling across the floor. He stood, looking down at the body, leaning on the scythe while he caught his breath, ignoring the gore like cheap salsa dripping from the blade.

Then he heard a whimper like a dog in pain. By the time he turned, it had built into a scream.

The little girl-he had forgotten her-was standing over his mother's head. He wiped the blood from his eyes and took a step toward her. The little simpleton didn't run, just screamed louder. The sound wasn't at all muffled by the little hands covering her face. Twenty seconds, then thirty, with no sign of stopping. Even when he picked her up by the front of her t-shirt, she just dangled and shrieked. He gave her a little shake, with no visible effect except the wet spot spreading down the front of her pants.

Well, she hadn't done that the last time he'd picked her up. Then again, she couldn't have been more than two or three at the time, and probably hadn't understood what was going on. There was certainly no denying that she understood this time.

Was Karen a better mother than he'd thought plausible, or did all little girls get this upset at the sight of a little violence?

"Stop screaming," he suggested. She didn't. At this rate, House of Horrors or not, someone was going to come after him. He raised his free hand to her face, prepping the toxin, hoping it would be enough to shut her up.

And then their eyes locked, blue on blue.

He had always known how much like his father he looked, so there was no logical reason why his maternal half-sister should look a thing like him. But those were his eyes, the eyes he had once seen every day in the mirror, but not in more than twenty years. A child's eyes, wide and open, brimming with tears and still innocent enough to believe there was some hope of salvation, no matter how slim.

It was like taking a fist hard in the stomach. How many times had he been held just like that, preparatory to having his lunch money stolen? Or, more likely, being pummeled because he _had_ no lunch money. Or, when he was still small enough for an old lady to lift, being punished for letting the bigger children beat him up.

No amount of caterwauling had ever done him any good. He had wondered why for the longest time. If anyone had ever given him a kind look or a gentle word, his fool seven-year-old self would have sworn his undying loyalty right then and there.

So naturally, when the little girl looked up at him with her big pleading eyes, he released a full dose of fear toxin into her face. It was high time she learned what the world really was.

When that didn't stop the screaming, he tore a strip off Karen's skirt and gagged the girl. Then he tied her to one of the chairs at the bloody buffet. He put the head in front of her as the new main course, surrounded by an artistic arrangement of wine glasses filled with the real thing, as best he could scrape it off the floor. The rest of the body fit nicely into the witches' cauldron.

It set a very nice scene. Crane patted the child on the head, picked up his scythe, and went on his merry way.

This had been a good day.


	7. Chapter 7

The girls were wide-eyed, looking as if they were about to cry. Jonathan shrugged.

"I suppose you would prefer that I had killed her."

"Well…no, but…"

"Oh, get out of the way." He held his hand out to the girl hiding behind them. "Come here, Marilyn. Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you." Trembling, she put her hand in his and allowed herself to be drawn forward. "Do you remember me?"

She managed a tiny, "No."

"I'm your brother. Did you know you had a brother?"

"N-no."

"We've met before, when you were just a little girl." Reassured by his gentle tone, she tried a ghost of a smile. Jonathan smiled back. "We played croquet with Mommy's head, remember?" Then he sprayed a dose of toxin in her face.

As Marilyn collapsed, the girls scrambled back, covering their mouths and noses.

"Squishy! What the hell?"

"What? Did you really think I _wanted_ a sister? If I did, I wouldn't have gotten rid of the other one."

"_Other_ one?"

"My father was unwise enough to try the 'I have a wife and kids' line. Otherwise I never would have known about her. A shame, really. I almost liked that one."

The girls stepped over the wailing teenager, knowing whatever else happened to her was out of their hands.

"Squishy, we have got to work on your people skills."

* * *

_End notes: The other sister is actually a reference to a very early, unfinished and unpublished story of mine. But Gerald really did ask for mercy on account of his wife and kids, which I always thought was just inviting Jonathan to target them as well._

_I always found it interesting that while Jonathan's confrontation with his father was basically, "Hi, I'm the son you never cared enough to know; now have fun plummeting to your doom!" when he met his mother, he seemed to be looking for some kind of emotional validation. Shame it didn't work out._

_Thanks for reading._


End file.
